UPDATED: Trump accuses ex-Mueller team member Peter Strzok of treason

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, President Donald Trump said a former member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team who was found to have sent text messages critical of him was guilty of treason.

The remarks were mentioned in a short paragraph about FBI agent Peter Strzok whose texts about Trump, according to the president, “amounted to treason.”

President Donald Trump said Thursday that text messages critical of him shared by FBI employees amounted to treason, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Journal reporters interviewed Trump for 45 minutes, the paper reported, in a conversation that touched on everything from North Korea to Steve Bannon.

“A man is tweeting to his lover that if [Democrat Hillary Clinton] loses, we’ll essentially do the insurance policy,” Trump said. “We’ll go to phase two and we’ll get this guy out of office.”

“This is the FBI we’re talking about—that is treason,” he added. “That is a treasonous act. What he tweeted to his lover is a treasonous act.” Trump was referring to text messages between Agent Peter Strzok — once a member of special counsel Robert Mueller’s team — and FBI lawyer Lisa Page, who worked briefly on Mueller’s team as well.

The paper referred to its earlier reporting that Strzok’s “insurance policy” comment was made in reference to the need for aggressiveness in the bureau’s probe of potential ties between Trump’s campaign and Russia.